Fun times at base camp: Niki Gudex diary

After three months at my home away from home in Colorado, it has come time to move on to my second base for the season in Freiburg in the south of Germany near the border of Switzerland.

My first week was spent in LA, but since then I have spent plenty of time acclimatising to altitude, as most of the races this year have been above 8000 feet. The highest point in Australia is only a bit over 6000 feet, so racing at altitude is a bit of a shock to the system for someone coming from Sydney.

Staying with everyone from SRM has been fantastic; Uli has made it feel like a home away from home, which makes such a difference. Uli is such a great guy and not surprisingly he has many good friends always stopping by to say hi or stay for dinner. Being part of a home sure beats four months of building up bikes in hotel rooms. We even had a pet for a while - well, we had a cute little deer that came and spent a few hours in the backyard.